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This chapter proposes the scar as a productive image to conceptualize the relation of speakers to the particular language otherwise called mother tongue, native or first language. Thinking of this relation in terms of a scar avoids the biopolitical implications of concepts derived from the context of family and birth that have, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, come to present language as basis of a nation state. The image of the scar also avoids the biographical normalization and linguistic hierarchization implied in the term first language, as both are equally important biopolitical strategies of forming individuals and communities. Thinking of the mother tongue in terms of a scar emphasizes the intensity of lasting formation and identification entailed by acquiring this particular language, and it highlights the violence inherent to these processes that tends to be covered up by the naturalizing and family-related imagery of native or mother tongue as well as by the favour implied in the term first language.
Zu Sprachkompetenz und Sprachkontakt an Schulen mit deutscher Unterrichtssprache in Rumänien
(2011)
After the events of 1989 pupils exit German language schools with a degree of German language proficiency which is much lower than research suggests it should be, given the amount of exposure to the language they had throughout their years of schooling. Generally, the only reason put forward for this relative lack of success in acquiring the language is the loss of the ethnic German population, which would have, on the one hand, provided the bulk of learners, and on the other hand, offered a rich linguistic environment to the few pupils of other ethnicities who are not native German speakers. In the present work I intend to challenge this mono-causal explanation by presenting the complexity of variables discussed in SLA research.